Casa Grande, AZ news and local guide

Casa Grande was founded in 1879, during the Arizona mining boom, because of the Southern Pacific Railroad. In January 1880 the settlement of Terminus, "end of the line," was established with five residents and three buildings, and in September 1880 railroad executives renamed it Casa Grande after the nearby Hohokam ruins of that name. The town grew slowly, and fires in 1886 and 1893 destroyed all its wooden buildings. When mining slowed in the 1890s it was nearly abandoned, but it survived through agriculture and was incorporated in 1915. Thompson Rodney Peart was one of its founding fathers, and Peart Road, Peart Park and the Peart Center are named for him. The town was also home to one of the Farm Security Administration's collective farms.

More about Casa Grande

From 1942 to 1945 the Gila River War Relocation Center, a camp for Japanese Americans, stood outside Casa Grande. Among those held there were the future actor Pat Morita and the baseball player Kenichi Zenimura, who built a baseball field and organized a league in the camp. In 1959 Horace Stoneham, owner of the San Francisco Giants, began developing the Francisco Grande Hotel and Golf Resort as a spring training site, and the first exhibition game was played there in 1961, with Willie Mays hitting a 375-foot home run. The Giants no longer train there, but the hotel's pool, shaped like a bat and ball, recalls those years. Sources Wikipedia: Casa Grande, Arizona